How do YOU format your eBook Table of Contents?

Hi,

My take on this is as long as the reader can easily look for what he/she wants then its ok.

Remember to keep things organized but also try to make it look good (I hope I'm making sense to you)

-Aljiro

I use numbers as a rule because most people can't read Roman Numerals after 20 or 30 pages, and most of my ebooks are at least 40-50 pages. It's just easier to read is all.

Thank you, Nathan! I would love to see that!

Thanks Nathan!

2 questions....

1) Do you typically prefer using "Tahoma" for your TOCs?....do you feel that it is more readable to readers? How about a font like "arial"?....and, do you use the same font for your TOC as you do for the rest of your eBook?

2) The website at the very end (yourebookssuck.com) seems to go to a "Forbidden" page....

(lol...I guess that was 'technically' more than 2 questions...

I strictly use OpenOffice Writer, so my instructions may be different than other Warriors' answers above.

Whenever I create a Table of Contents, or "TOC", I will make use of specific styles within OOo Writer. Namely the Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, and so on, depending on how many sub-chapters there are.

I will use these Heading styles when formatting the chapter and sub-chapter titles by left-clicking and dragging across my titles, then selecting the appropriate Heading style from the drop down menu. Or double clicking on the style from the Styles and Formatting menu.

Then I select: Insert > Indexes and Tables > Indexes and Tables.

From there, I can decide what type of font to apply to the TOC styles such as the Content Heading, Contents 1, Contents 2, Contents 3, etc. And which chapters or sub-chapters I want to include within the TOC.

Of course all of this is done when you create the initial Table of Contents and if you uncheck the "Protected against manual changes" box, then you can remove the default underlining, change the font family, size, color, etc.

I always use page numbers. Unless I have a client that wants me to use roman numerals in a specific section or throughout the entire ebook document. As suggested, using regular old numbers is easier for readers to associate with.

And also, if I create a new sub-chapter or main chapter within my ebook(s), I can always update the TOC by simply right clicking anywhere within it and selecting: "Update Index/Table".

Even though whenever you do the above when using OOo Writer, you will have to reset any manual changes you've made, you will always have a clickable, working TOC inside your ebook(s).


Tracy